>I feel really stupid but I have been working half the night and i feel stupid
>
>I have a character string which can be of variable length
>
>There are 20 variations of the string
>
>I need to find the position of the - * in each string so that I know the length of the preceeding text
>
>Examples
>
>colin*ssssss so that the answer is 6
>
>colinnorth*cccc - here the answer is 11
>
>I feel daft for asking

?at('*',lcString)